The Divided Family in Civil War America [Hardcover]

Amy Murrell Taylor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807829692 | ISBN-13: 978-0807829691 | Publication Date: February 26, 2009

The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting "brother against brother." The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America's bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America.

In hundreds of border state households, brothers--and sisters--really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale--something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Broad, deep, and thoroughly current."
— Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"A rich, new perspective on the Civil War."
— Virginia Magazine

"[The Divided Family in Civil War America] is a sophisticated and multi-faceted treatment of an ambitious topic. Taylor makes as significant a contribution to gender and family history as she does to that the on the Civil War home front, and her book deserves a wide readership from those interested in either field."

— Journal of Southern History

"A deeply researched and well-written book."
— Arkansas Historical Quarterly

From the Inside Flap

Taylor looks behind the Civil War metaphor of "brother against brother" to the real experiences of families, particularly in border states, whose households were split by divided loyalties. She studies letters and diaries to understand how families coped with division between husbands and wives, fathers and sons, and she traces the adoption of the image of the "house divided" in newspapers, government documents, and popular fiction to describe the divided nation.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (February 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807829692
• ISBN-13: 978-0807829691
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,012,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Impressive Work, As Much Literature as History, May 30, 2006

By 

Civil War Historian "Agricola" (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divided Family in Civil War America (Hardcover)

I am extremely impressed with Taylor's book, which explores the real and imagined consequences of the Civil War on families in border states, where the question of secession was the most complicated and the most fraught. This book not only documents (in writing that rises to the level of great literary writing -- a rarity in young historians) the actual occurrence of split families and what they had to say for themselves, but also the psychological, moral, and political implications of families at odds with each other. That is, this book gets beyond the idea of "the brother's war" as merely a curiosity or a sentimental metaphor, and shows how the state of the society -- the relations between men and women, white and black -- itself is revealed in the experience of these families, observed in extremis.

The writing, again, is extraordinary. Fans of Doris Kearn Goodwin or David McCullough will love this book, and will be pleased to know that Taylor is of the new generation of historians and likely to be around and writing for a very long time.